URLs du Jour

■ Hey, did the Proverbialist toss the papyrus to Bernie Sanders for
Proverbs
22:16?

16 One who oppresses the poor to increase his wealth
and one who gives gifts to the rich—both come to poverty.

It seems like good advice, though, especially that last part.

■ I don't know if it made much of a splash outside the Granite
State, but this is what we especially noticed in the leaked
transcript of Trump's January call to the president of Mexico: "I
won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested
den." The link goes to Prof Althouse, who derides "the level of
Democratic Party media savvy, trying to foment outrage" via (her
example) this
tweet:

Yes, it's pretty. They've got that fall foliage, so how could they — why would they? — use drugs?

This outrage is particularly phony coming from NH Democrats, who are
just now trashing the six-month old Trump administration,
while the problem did nothing but grow during 8 years of President Obama and
12 years of NH governors John Lynch and Maggie Hassan, all of whom were asleep at
the switch.

[…] the problem is that the public’s eagerness to see a general impose order on the White House—with the president’s blessing, no less—represents a potentially dangerous bargain that at least some Americans seem willing to forge with serving and retired members of the U.S. military: we will accept dysfunction in the Oval Office, it seems, so long as there are enough generals ensconced around it as insurance against disaster.

By all accounts the generals in question (Kelly, McMaster, Mattis)
are fine folk. But military folk mixed up in
political positions is symbolically bad.

■ This is Pun Salad, so every now and then we have to point
out a little groan-inducing wordplay. And today, Mark Steyn provides
it with his commentary on the kerfuffle between CNN's Jim Acosta and
Trump advisor Stephen Miller:
Bad
Poems Make Verse Law. Mark notes this USNews description
of the Emma Lazarus verse:

The White House advisor appeared to distance himself from the 1883
"huddled masses" poem inscribed at the base of the landmark, chiding
reporter Jim Acosta. Miller's remarks shocked many, even as
supporters argue the symbolic poem technically isn't US law.

[Emph. added] Technically? Technically!?

Yes, it's true: this poem "technically isn't US law". It's not statute law, or even statue law. When Shelley said "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", he didn't intend for you to take it literally, as apparently half the population of America now does. And, if we have to have poems as law, let's start with Shelley's and work our way down - way down - to Emma Lazarus.

Ms Lazarus (it turns out) was a Georgist, an adherent of everyone's
favorite late-19th century crackpot idea. In fact, she wrote
another poem said to have been inspired by George's tome
Progress and Poverty,
in the New York Times on October 2, 1881.

Oh splendid age when Science lights her lamp
At the brief lightning's momentary flame.
Fixing it steadfast as a star, man's name
Upon the very brow of heaven to stamp,
Launched on a ship whose iron-cuirassed sides
Mock storm and wave. Humanity sails free;
Gayly upon a vast untraveled sea,
O'er pathless wastes, to ports undreamed she rides.
Richer than Cleopatra's barge of gold,
This vessel, manned by demi-gods, with freight
Of priceless marvels. But where yawns the hold
In that deep, reeking hell, what slaves be they
Who feed the ravenous monster, pant and sweat,
Nor know if overhead reign night and day?

As such, [the Interior Department] is unable to identify how much grant money has been used to purchase land, how much land has been purchased and whether that land is being used for its intended purpose. Without an adequate process in place to monitor funds used to purchase land, [the department] is potentially exposed to significant risk of wasted funds.

But I'm sure they'll do a much better job when they take over health
insurance.

According to The New York Times, the civil rights division
of the Trump administration's Justice Department is going to ramp up
investigating and sue universities over affirmative-action
admissions policies deemed discriminatory against "white
applicants."

Incidentally, nothing in the story backs up the Times' assertion that "white applicants" will be afforded a special place in these suits. Now, I get the perfunctory need to render everything a clear-cut racial crisis. But not only are Asian students disproportionately hurt by these policies—white women also happen to benefit from affirmative action programs.The reaction was predictable. When your ideology demands you bean-count human beings by their color, it's probably difficult to understand that individuals, whatever their race, can be hurt by discriminatory policies—even a white male.

This policy provides guidelines specifically designed to prevent conflicts of interest that can occur
when two members of the UNH community whose institutional roles
place them in an uneven power
dynamic engage in a consensual amorous relationship. The institutional interest in establishing clear
standards of professional conduct for these types of relationships is clear. Such relationships create the
opportunity for abuse of power and/or bias in the exercise of professional judgment.

With the advent of a renewed federal interest in the use of racial criteria in college admissions — the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions intends to launch new investigations into the question — we arrive, or re-arrive, at what is now a very familiar debate. Those who argue that the policies of our public institutions should be racially neutral have the better end of the argument, and always have. But conservatives should spare a moment to give some consideration to the merits — which are real but not dispositive — of the other side of the argument.

It's a good summary, and points out the folly involved:

There is some relief to be found in specificity. Even if we were to
take to heart arguments based on “social justice,” the use of racial
preferences in college admissions could probably be safely set aside
as an instrument of such justice, because it does very little for
people who are in fact marginalized. The people who are genuinely
suffering in our society are not, for the most part, right on the
cusp of being accepted to a top-tier undergraduate program or
professional school. The elite obsession with admissions policies at
what are, after all, mostly elite institutions is
omphaloskepsis-as-policy: The genuinely downtrodden are not applying
to study at Haverford College. Upper West Side progressives care a
great deal about the admissions rules at Columbia but have
relatively little to say about the dropout rate for black men in New
York City’s public schools. If “social justice” is to be found in
some part in institutional reform, then the institutions that ought
to be on our radar are public schools, not Ivy League universities.

Yes, he said "omphaloskepsis". He went there.

■ And Lileks
is on fire today with an R-rated Bleat, full of the f-word, because
he's tired of lazy writers using it to pump up their stupid
clickbait headlines.

Buzzfeed abounds with these people - young, presumably educated,
full of brittle snark and conspicuous insecurities, constantly
quizzing each other about which Harry Potter Punctuation Mark they
are (you could be a comma tbh) or whether their score on this test
shows they are a true 90s Disney Princess or the rest of the
meaningless exercises in emotional onanism they perform nine times
an hour to fill up the day.

We all have our bubbles, I suppose. But Lileks has identified a
particularly sad one.

Disclaimers:
Unquoted opinions expressed herein are solely those of the
blogger.

Pun Salad is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates
Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a
means for the blogger to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.